Fundraising.org.uk

Clarety_2

Has anyone any experience of the above web site? I was hoping to use it to help raise money for a charity I support but do not want to get involved in a rip off scam. Basically its a web site which promises to pay money to ur chosen charity every time you purchase something on line if you do so via registration to their site...too good to be true? Please help.

Savvy_Sue

I'm a bit confused, because https://www.fundraising.org.uk takes me to the Association of Fundraising Consultants, who are legit, although I've never used them. I think they tend to be more appropriate for mega fundraising drives for larger charities, although I may be wrong about that.

I am aware of various schemes of the kind you mention but can't quickly find one described on the AFC site. For example there's a fundraising tab on buyat, and I know you can register a charity there and encourage all your supporters to buy through them. Amazon have an associates scheme, which works well if there's a website your supporters will visit and click on a link to Amazon that you show there. Then there's using Everyclick as a search engine, and nominating a particular charity to benefit. And like I said, there are others, those are just the 3 I know about personally.

Does that help at all?

lifeisgood

Do you mean this site?

http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/

It is a cashback site like Quidco, but doesn't pay out quite so generously.
Each charity receives a cheque quarterly, though there is now a minimum payout amount.

It works really well - my charity have earned a fair bit from the site.

Fairfran

Easyfundraising.org.uk
I am starting to doubt this organisation. It is a business [reg.04764164], definitely NOT a charity... but when I asked them how can my cause marry my donations to the payments received, they have taken me in circles for months, and still not answered the question. I have even sent my cause a printout of my amounts raised, in the hopes it will pan out, but they are having a job seeing even the total I've raised, let alone any other shoppers. Any more info, good or bad, gratefully received. I was glad to see that Lifeisgood is happy, and hope I am just being overly suspicious.

Lesley_Pinnell

I have used Easyfundraising now for two of my favourite local charities - the Church and the school at which I work. I have raised £135 for the church and £117 for the school. I carried out some investigations before I started, especially bearing in mind that I am expecting people to put their bank detail information on the site. I checked them out with the Institute of Fundraising and found that Easyfundraising is a registered member, but an orginisational member rather than a charitable member. (You can see that they are registered on the Institute of Fundraising website). I emailed the The Institute of Fundraising and did get a response to confirm their membership and their validity but I don't have their words handy. From this I concluded that they had thought of a great idea which would benefit the charity and themselves and their business was obviously acceptable to the Institute. I then contacted the Charities Commission who said they don't have jurisdiction on charities and suggested taking normal precautions as you would when buying anything on line - check what controls they have in place. Basically their mission appears to be to research search engines of behalf of various companies (maybe the companies they are setting up through Easyfundraising. They are setting up a new search engine which uses Yahoo and various other search engines - presumably the Easyfundraising search engine. What they are about is explained on their website. When you enter their website and go into the shopping sites, you are actually going through into the retailer's own website.

I have been able to log the activities and purchases well. I have quite a few members and as I am the administrator for the two charities, because I set it up, I am able to see all the purchases that go through and tie them up with the statements. I can almost tell who has been buying by the type of purchases made! I don't see members names or bank details or anything like that.

If you can't find a supplier and you think it would be good to have them on board, it is very easy to request that they look into approaching the supplier with a view to joining up. I requested they look to get Clarks Shoes on board, and they did. Some companies (computer type companies can't join as their set up is not compatible - Easyfundraising always come back and answer your queries). Having Amazon is fantastic. We buy loads of school books and this is where I raise most of the funds at school. You obviously have to pay immediately but I have it set up at the school so that I can do this. You can also book air flights through 'Wegolo' which sources the cheapest flights really easily. Hotel accommodation and trains etc can be booked through the travel section. This again is great for our school. My daughter booked her Canadian flights and raised £7.68.

I have had experience of one of my purchaes not showing on the website and you have a really easy facility to ask the Easyfundraising team to investigate the matter. They very promptly come back to you, as they do with any query whatsover and after a day or two, the amount was credited to the account. Fantastic.

Their website is absolutely brilliant in its simplicity and clarity.

Fairfran

Easyfundraising.org.uk
Thanks Lesley, for that info. BUT... are we talking about Easyfundraising.org.uk OR Easyfundraising - don't know the ending?
The one I've been using is the first mentioned. Clarify please?
Cheers:A Fran

lifeisgood

Easyfundraising.org.uk appears to be a business, and doesn't pretend otherwise. They only pay out about 50% of the monies they would receive from the suppliers, like many of the other cashback sites.

Like other cashback sites, they will be times when purchases aren't tracked. Best to email them with details of the transaction.

As a charity, we can check the transactions where we have earned money. Suppliers, amounts etc, but not the names of our supporters or description of their purchases.

Unlike most other cashback sites, Amazon is signed up with them, so several of our supporters make all their Amazon purchases through the site.

We found them soon after they started, and are very pleased with the monies we have received from them with very little effort on our part.

http://www.easysearch.org.uk/ is also attached to easyfundraising, though the payout doesn't seem to be worth the hassle. Approx. 1p for every 2 searches made.

paulwf

Fairfran wrote: »

Easyfundraising.org.uk
I am starting to doubt this organisation. It is a business [reg.04764164], definitely NOT a charity.

This reminds me of the debate over justgiving.com that ran in the media last year. Justgiving make a profit of £1.5 million a year but they did invest a lot of money up front and have revolutionised the way charities have collected money and as such have probably considerably increased the amount of money some charities bring in.

Feordorca

It is genuine. I use this site regularly and my charity (Every Chance Rescue) has benefited from it. I use the same retailers I would otherwise have bought from, so it's no inconvenience and Every Chance Rescue gets a donation from my purchase. OK it's a small donation but it costs me nothing so everyone benefits.

Fairfran

Re Paul's quote - if you must quote a very old post, at least read up on the subsequent posts in other threads [search easyfundraising.org.uk to find them]. I was asking for answers, which I eventually answered myself!!!
Thanks Feordorca, I agreed with what you said today, so long ago, I can't remember...! :T
I have raised quite a bit for both Shelterbox and Love a Child Foundation.
All you have to do is remember before you shop online.
I also raise pennies for my causes with the associated Easysearch, which you can find at easyfundraising.org.uk.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Fran
:A

pinkcalculator

Hi everyone,
I've been happily using and pushing the main site and defiantly money accumulating and coming back to us.
However I've been using the search myself as a test, I've got an iPad so I made an app and have used it extensively for over two weeks, the sats up to the 7th are out and it's still showing a zero searches.
Has anyone else used this and actually got anywhere, I can't obviously recommend it to a large organisation to use if it won't register and pay.
Thanks
pinkcalculator